DOCUMENT: Crime

Mick's Cricket Addiction

Flowers, snooker, satellite TV replace smack backstage for Stones

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Mick's Cricket Addiction

JANUARY 17--While aware that members of the aging Rolling Stones were no longer shooting heroin and gallivanting with groupies before a concert, we were still crushed to learn that Mick Jagger passes his pre-gig time watching cricket on satellite TV.

That's one of the more amusing requirements found in the group's concert rider for their ongoing "A Bigger Bang" world tour (an excerpt from the Stones rider can be found here).

Jagger and his bandmates (Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and Charlie Watts) each get their own dressing room, which carry cute names like "Cotton Club" (Watts) and "Recovery" (Wood). But Keith's room, of course, has the best handle: "Camp X-Ray," an apparent reference to the similarly named Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

When it comes to flowers, Mick declines an infusion of color in his dressing room, though Keith and Ronnie each opt for a $45 "medium white Casablanca lilly arrangement with weeping eucalyptus" to mask the vomit smell. Mick, however, does demand the construction of a small "running area" that needs to be shielded off by drapes.

And, as with previous tours, the Stones are again carrying their own snooker table, which is set up in its own backstage room. So when the group arrives in Detroit next month to perform at the Super Bowl XL halftime show, don't expect Jagger to be watching the first half of the Broncos-Panthers game. He'll likely be enjoying the first inning of a match between the Essex Eagles and the Kent Spitfires. (8 pages)